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Usually Monica Rho, MD, can be spotted in a white coat in her role as the Reva and David Logan Section Chief of Musculoskeletal Medicine at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab.
Recently, however, she has spent time in an additional role. She serves as the lead team physician for the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team — and was part of the staff who helped the players win the gold medal at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.
Upon her return, Dr. Rho shared her reflections about her special role overseeing medical care for USWNT.
Tell us about your role as lead team physician for USWNT.
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As the lead team physician, I oversee a large medical team for U.S. women’s soccer. The care team also includes six physicians; a head athletic trainer and two additional athletic trainers; a physical therapist; three massage therapists; and a chiropractor.
Everyone sees the medical team on the field, but about 95% of what I do is off the field. As the lead team physician, I am involved in all of the athletes’ medical care, ranging from many musculoskeletal issues, upper respiratory infections, gastrointestinal issues, skin issues or any other primary care needs while we were traveling across France. There are a lot of administrative aspects of sports medicine that include taking our athletes through the drug testing process and making sure all of their documents are in alignment with anti-doping policies for these major world events. I help address all of these medical issues to allow the players to just focus on the sport and the next game.
I went to the Paralympics in Rio in 2016 as the lead team physician for the U.S. Men’s Paralympic soccer team, and then to the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 with the U.S. Women’s National Team. The Paris 2024 Games were special for me because it was my first Olympics with a crowd — in Tokyo, we were still in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic and there were no fans. This was certainly a more vibrant and exciting experience with full stadiums and crowds cheering loudly.
How do you support a team while they are on the road traveling as well as competing at the highest level?
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As a high-performance team, we provide the best-in-class support and medical care to ensure everyone can keep healthy and play to the best of their ability.
In between soccer matches, our athletes go into an “active recovery” phase. We create an environment around them that allows their bodies to rest, heal and get ready for the next event. We travel around the world with a world-class training room — equipped with the best technology to allow our athletes to recover. We also have them participate in rehabilitation programs with our physical therapist and our athletic trainers.
We sometimes have state-of-the-art technology, like a red-light therapy bed and a hyperbaric oxygen chamber (when permitted) that we travel with to help aid in recovery. A favorite among our players and staff are the compression boots that we provide in our training room to help promote blood flow, especially after long travel days.
Describe a day in the life at the Olympics as part of the medical team.
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On an average, non-game day at the Olympics, we would start training room hours around 8 am. The athletes came in either before or after breakfast. They would check in with us to let us know how the evening and the night went for them. Players would go through a daily screen with a sports scientist that is a more formal assessment that is tracked over time. There was constant communication between the sports scientists and the medical team about how the athletes were doing from the standpoint of strength, flexibility, hydration status and level of soreness.
Players could sign up for times to see a physical therapist or athletic trainer during training room hours throughout the day. The physicians would be in the training room during these times, and, when we were needed for additional consultation, we were available to the athletes.
After lunch, we headed to practice for a few hours, where the main role of the medical team was to monitor the safety of the athletes and staff during the training session and drills. We were there and prepared for everything. Our team always travels with the typical supplies — athletic tape, bandages, compression sleeves, ice — but we also were prepared for larger emergencies and we always had splints, casting material, AEDs, and CPR masks for resuscitation. The U.S. team was mainly in southern France for the start of the tournament, and we saw temperatures in the high 80s and low 90s for the first few weeks we were there. Heat illness was a major concern for the medical staff, and we were monitoring conditions on the field in regard to heat.
Once we returned from training, there was dinner and the training room would open again for the athletes to come seek our services. The day would end between 9 and 10 pm, with medical team meetings, High Performance team meetings and sometimes meetings with the coaches.
What are the most common types of musculoskeletal injuries or conditions that you see in soccer?
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Hamstring tightness is certainly a concern for soccer players, particularly the really fast ones who are explosive when they start to sprint. Also, we see some hip adductor strains — which are injuries to the groin muscles on the inside thigh. This is pretty common when you think about how these players kick a ball and how often they repeat this motion.
What was it like when the team took the gold medal?
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It is hard to describe in words, but how you’ve always imagined it would feel … it feels exactly like that! There is a great sense of elation, a great sense of pride in what was just accomplished, and a great sense of gratitude. No one thinks they did it alone. We all did this together. It was definitely a team win!
What is one takeaway you have from this experience?
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I am also the Residency Program Director at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, which means I lead a wonderful team of 40 Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PM&R) residents during their training.
The week I returned from Paris, I was scheduled to give them a lecture and at the end of the lecture, I wanted to share more about my experience at the Olympics. I told them I actually see a correlation between elite athletes and the physicians we train here. They have a similar mentality and dedication to being at the top of their game and craft. They always expect the best from themselves, and they take their role in life very seriously.
People who work in healthcare don’t have gold-medal moments in the exact same way that athletes do, but I really do think what we do is gold-medal worthy. When we admit a patient who is at a low point — with a lost sense of self as they start their rehabilitation from an injury or illness — and then four or six weeks later we get to discharge that same patient with recovered function so they can get back to their life …that’s a gold-medal moment that shouldn’t be taken for granted. We should embrace and celebrate our own gold-medal moments in life.
